Poker is a very well-known card game. More precisely, “poker” refers to any of a family of card games, many of which are played for entertainment and—on occasion—for profit. One feature shared by most, if not all, of the various games known as “poker” is that players bet in rounds. Another shared feature is that hands are ranked (royal flush is highest, followed by straight flush, then four of a kind, and so on). The hand ranking used in different versions of poker is similar, if not always identical.
Another feature of poker, and also of many other card games, is that cards are normally given to players from a deck which has been shuffled, generated in a random order, or otherwise placed in a random order. Thus, players have come to expect that any patterns in the order of cards drawn from the deck are merely accidental. Too much predictability in the order of shuffled cards—particularly if that order favors one player—may well be seen as proof of cheating. Cheating is taken seriously. In the American West in the 1800's, card cheats were routinely shot dead. Even as recently as the 1970's, a United States Supreme Court case discussed the fatal shooting of a card cheat:                The story began in June 1970, when one William Douglas, a professional gambler from Las Vegas, Nev., arrived in Memphis, Tenn., calling himself Ray Blaylock and carrying a gun and a deck of cards. It ended on the evening of Jul. 6, 1970, when Douglas was shot and killed in a Memphis apartment.        Testimony at the trial in the Tennessee state court showed that one Woppy Gaddy, who was promised a cut of Douglas' take, arranged a game of chance between Douglas and Robert Wood, a sometime Memphis gambler. Unwilling to trust the outcome of the contest entirely to luck or skill, Douglas marked the cards, and by game's end Robert Wood and his money had been separated. A second encounter between the two men yielded similar results, and Wood grew suspicious of Douglas' good fortune. In order to determine whether and how Douglas was cheating, Wood brought to the third game an acquaintance named Tommy Thomas, who had a reputation of being a “pretty good poker player.” Unknown to Wood, however, Thomas' father and Douglas had been close friends; Thomas, predictably, threw in his lot with Douglas, purposefully lost some $1,000, and reported to Wood that the game was clean. Wood nonetheless left the third game convinced that he was being cheated and intent on recouping his now considerable losses. He explained the situation to his brother, Joe E. Wood, and the two men decided to relieve Douglas of his ill-gotten gains by staging a robbery of the upcoming fourth game.        At this juncture respondents Randolph, Pickens, and Hamilton entered the picture. To carry out the staged robbery, Joe Wood enlisted respondent Hamilton, who was one of his employees, and the latter in turn associated respondents Randolph and Pickens. Douglas and Robert Wood sat down to the fourth and final contest on the evening of Jul. 6, 1970. Joe Wood and Thomas were present in the room as spectators. During the course of the game, Douglas armed himself with a .38-caliber pistol and an automatic shotgun; in response to this unexpected development Joe Wood pulled a derringer pistol on Douglas and Thomas, gave the gun to Robert Wood, and left to tell respondents to move in on the game. Before respondents arrived, however, Douglas reached for his pistol and was shot and killed by Robert Wood. Parker v. Randolph, 442 U.S. 62 (1979)        
In addition to card games, many other familiar games involve the presentation of some randomly chosen value to players. This is true whether the games are informal, or whether they are played in an institution such as a legally regulated casino. Some of the many examples of random moves include cards drawn from a shuffled deck, roulette wheel destinations landed on by a ball, numbers placed on a keno sheet, and the landing position of thrown dice. In poker, roulette, keno, craps, and other games of chance, players have come to expect that certain elements are randomly chosen, and many players would often be surprised—and even angered—if those elements were not in fact random in a given game. Accordingly, random number generation is a key aspect of automated games of chance.
This does not eliminate player skill as a factor. But traditionally, player skill is a skill in “playing the odds”, that is, in taking advantage of statistical likelihoods that are based on the assumption that the individual moves (card draws, roulette wheel outcomes, dice toss, etc.) are random. In short, the fact that a player is skilled at playing the odds simply reinforces the importance of randomness in games of chance.
Other aspects of technology and culture, discussed herein or previously known to those of skill in the art, may also be helpful in understanding the present invention.